Immorti:Chapter One (The Beginning of the End)

It seems so cold of me to rush in like this and tell you said unimportant life story, yet I find myself wanting to, hoping to tell you and for you to listen. For why does it matter since I lay here at this very moment bleeding to death upon the mud covered ground of a rotten city that seems to hate me for all that I have done to save humanity from it's own stupidity. We live, the human race, in a swirl of pleasure and nothing more. Our government, our support in this world has given us the means to live without trying anymore. The only pleasure yet is eternal life, well plausible replication of the very system built into my body and a few others. I am an Immorti, a human experimented on and transformed into the very thing most people during the first century of my life time, of this current time, hope to achieve. See they seek me for the large bounty on my head, obviously set by the so called government that runs this country and this world and the ability to try and sample the life of an Immorti. It is our blood that possesses the secret and only fresh and alive can it be transferred and studied. Once outside of the body it barely lives and survives, destroying all evidence of the miracle. 1

Immorti are normal like any other human being and from what scientist have been able to tell...well this miracle kills any who are not of a higher species level than the average human. Those who do survive its transformation and do not possess the potential as I remember those venomous men calling it, they were turned into something disgusting, a rotting demon of a creature, something resembling the form of a supernatural creature that used to haunt books from the old world. The blood sucking, day light hating, human and higher intelligence and strength. Those creatures once called vampires, resemble the disgusting things I have to keep off my back. See, I am the original Immorti. I am the one the gene to live forever came from, and thus I am the key to living as human as possible without any complications that even those like myself deal with. I live without disease; I live without a home and without an identity. I am nothing more than a street urchin who happened to have been picked up a group of people hoping to test the effects of certain poisons on the human body; they found none of them affected me. No terminal illnesses resulting from a blood to poison contact no failure in my systems. 2

That was where my life changed, where I became no longer human but more a pet to these people. A pet spoiled and then tested on, which to me at the age of ten was more than confusing. I was a brat in the sense of how those born into privilege act and a brat as in a child that acted out against parents that were abusive. There were other children, similar in the way they were gifted like me, but less than successful for they still suffered the worst diseases like any human but slowly would recover from the disease but some were left with scars, marks or complications and yet they would live on. They were treated as less than suitable for their attentions and I reveled in the attention. I sought the attention, needed it, was addicted to the attention.3

I thrived off of defeating different combatants in the training courses and in the superhuman training. I possessed continuously improved techniques, abilities to morph the very elements around me. I was the top contender in the world called the Facility. A school almost where you learned to kill or be killed most often than not. I saw people at the age of eleven and twelve slowly die from blood loss, from insanity, from depression. This life was the only disease that could kill me and I didn't realize it was until I turned thirteen and my body became an adult. 4

At thirteen my body was able to breed as they called it. Now I was looked upon as a prize and a broodmare. Try as they might, I did not allow the men that worked the Facility towards me. My animal instincts told me to keep them away, to make sure they never touched me again or it would be my end. Thirteen though brought someone into my life I will always treasure. His name was Samuel. 5

"How is our little princess?" A voice I had grown not too fond of in the last couple of days cooed. I growled in the back of my throat hoping to scare him off. The last time he had gotten too close I had almost taken off a finger. I got half way through when one of the other men that ran the Facility, one who had an electric impulse stick came towards me. This thing sends electric shock through the body and trust me even as an Immorti it still hurts like hell. His intent was to shock me just for growling which is the normal punishment that I receive daily due to the fact that I usually try to take a chunk out of them. The one man I despised though held his hand up to still the man walking towards me with the electric shock. He backed away with the man and turned to the girl next to me, her name was Marcy.6

Marcy was annoying as could be. Indeed she was one of the few sane girls still in the cages surrounding me but none the less the sound of her footsteps, well more like the sound of her hands in the stupid loafers she kept as toy was annoying. What I never could understand was why she loved those old leather shoes, in fact the scientist who came in and out never really could understand why. The only one who actually remembered was the man who threatened my own sanity every day. He was the one who had given the shoes to her in hopes of getting a more sensible reaction out of her rather drooling mind but found to no avail her drooling continued and her mind had thus continued to progress with no thought process. She had been injected and tested with so many diseases in the last year her brain functions had begun to die off one by one. I can barely remember the times when she could actually talk, well spoke to me in a deep, rasping voice. Her words were somewhat mumbled and throw together, causing me to have to decipher every sentence. It kept my mind in tip top shape when it came to anything she said. The last time we had actually had any sort of conversation it had been about she could never forget the smell of peach pie in the early mornings on Sunday. 7

I don't quite remember the days or which one we were on at the time but I knew that each passed by slowly. Marcy continued to explain that her mother, who was had since been long dead after selling Marcy to the lab, had made one each morning. Supposedly it was to entice certain visitors to come to her home. Who these visitors were I will never know because any time I tried to push for an answer, because I never liked not knowing things, she would curl up into a ball and begin whimpering. They must have been horrible visitors. The other thing that Marcy would talk about every chance she got was her mother's pearls. They were of a lovely creamy white color and looked dazzling against her mother's skin. The best part, she explained, was that when her mother was not wearing them she would steal them and parade around the small neighborhood wearing them. Her neighborhood friends would begin to call her princess and lady and bow in a mocking manner to the raggedy girl, but for some reason that never really bothered her too much. She felt happy about it and that seemed like the only thing that mattered. To me, it was rather odd. I had never known my family or anything as wonderful as smells or jewelry. I had only known this cage. 8

“We have to continue to feed this drooling mess?” The man with the electric shock complained. He soon began to mumble about having served her eighty three cuts of lambs from the meat stock that was starting to grow thin from all the different children and teenagers who lined the walls of the lab. That was how long ago it had been since Marcy had been able to speak, eighty three days of nothing but drooling and mumbled sounds that I could never figure out. After a quick poke of the electric shock stick into Marcy’s cage they turned their attention back to me. I growled low under my breath while I barred my teeth in threat. They only laughed as Dr. Derelia reached in with his hand to touch me. I snapped at him like a wild dog in hopes he would get it out of his head that I was not his play toy. His age never mattered to me, I was going to live forever and he would die with time. This was something that never left my mind as I watched him come towards me with those slightly glazed over eyes. 9

“I brought you a gift princess.” That damn cooing again. In all seriousness I couldn’t stand it in the least, it made me want to rip his throat out. So I growled in response. “He is a special boy just like you, capable of accepting the gene. Not as perfectly as you but that isn’t the problem now is it?” He raised an eyebrow in hopes that a possible reaction appeared on my thin face. Instead I pursed my lips and hoped that whatever this stupid toy was would not break like the last one I threw at his face. 10

Dr. Derelia stepped back and there behind him was Samuel. He was about the same age as I, with emerald green eyes which were of a serious shining tone. This was what us Immorti were marked with. His hair was of a raven black that framed his thin face. His lips were straight lined and pursed as he eyed me curiously. My first thought was to ask what he was thinking about but Derelia’s presence hung over us like a smog. So I stayed quiet and waited for the Doctor to leave. 11

“Samuel say hi to your new friend Raelynn.” I hardly ever heard the name I was given. It sounded strange as it rolled off of his tongue, but I didn’t bother to think on it. I wanted to know why Samuel was there so I growled out my question. 12

“And why do I get a playmate? There is something you are forgetting to mention to me Derelia.” I said in a raspy voice. We were barely fed or given water and forced together in a training arena all the time. For those of us who were under the age of fourteen, were allowed to live through all the training but as soon as the time came we learned what it meant to survive. “You know him and I will end up fighting. He will be nothing more than another victim of mine.” I turned with a dark look in my gray eyes. They no longer shown silvery like the moon, for I didn’t know what the moon looked like. Derelia always told me what certain things looked like on the outside but sometimes I had my doubts about whether or not he was actually telling the truth. 13

“He is to be your friend Raelynn. You won’t have to ever fight him.” This struck me as odd, why would he be giving me a friend? I glanced over at the ragged boy with a curious look, what had this boy done to get such a chance? I drew closer to the cage door, reaching a hand out to the boy. He walked forward with not a hint of caution as his fingertips brushed against mine. I pulled back in surprise as a shock went streaming up my arm. What had he done to me? I growled in protest to the sensation and went to the back of my cage. 14

“I am like you. Kindred to kindred soul moon eyes.” My senses went on high as he uttered the moon eyes. This attempt to try and get me to change my mind about this situation was beginning to become overwhelming. Was he like me? 15

By this time Derelia had left the room, happy that the two of us on some primal level were bonding together. I moved to the front of the cage and reached out to Samuel again, wanting to feel the sensation once more. His fingers took a hold of my hand with such spirit that a gasp escaped my lips. His hand was smooth and warm to the touch but the grip was strong. I pulled him to me so I could press the hand to my cheek. I turned my silver eyes up to him in earnest, wanting some sort of sign that this was not a trap in the least. Deep down though I knew it was a trap of some sort. Right now though I could have cared less. 16

“So what did you do to deserve such treatment? Most are pitted against me, not given as friends.” I brushed my lips over his knuckles which were as smooth as a new experiment being brought in. He had not seen the light of battle or the scorching sun beating down on us as we were pitted against one another. His story I wanted to know more than anything. 17

“Deserve? They believed you needed a companion and here I am.” He answered with a shrug. Indeed he was intelligent for his age, much like those of us born with the higher gene structure to support the blood inside of me. I possessed the trait, the pure sample. Others were adaptive and could withstand. Samuel was one of the lucky people who would stand against time with me. 18

“Why don’t you tell me?” I pushed, reaching out telepathically. Those who reached such levels of brain power could almost caress another person’s mind with this. Caress information out of them without them knowing you slipped past their barriers and into the deepest thoughts of their mind. What happened next I had never experienced. Samuel thrust me out of his mind with ease. No one else had ever done such a thing without the help of a blocking device. Now I became more than intrigued. 19

I reached down to grab a moldy orange that I had left at the bottom of the cage from weeks earlier. See the problem with fruit was that it could have diseases and viruses transferred into it a lot more than anything with starch like basis in the food items. I held the orange out to Samuel in hopes to try and get him to grow comfortable with me and reveal what it was I wanted to know. Diminish my intelligence and maybe he would say something in a rather complex nature. The problem for him would be was that I would understand every word he had said. Though I lived in a cage it never made a difference learning wise for me, I could take in anything and everything that was given to me. Some of the skills I had picked up on and it seemed possible Samuel had picked up on was from reading things like yesterday's wall street journal. Though I had never actually seen or met any of the people or known any of the products that were being sold, I could tell which were going where and when to invest. This skill I do owe to Derelia but I would never admit to such a thing. It did though when I broke free come in handy when I needed to make a large amount of money to help fund what my projects. Those projects will come later. For now, I can only say that Samuel and I shared a common bond when it came to intelligence, but I was determined to outsmart him in this game.20

"So what have they done to you?" I asked curiously as my gray eyes traveled over him. As far as I could tell there was nothing of notice on him. He didn't answer instead he walked up with an odd folded piece of paper in his hand. I snatched it from him as soon as I got my hands on it and unfolded it. It was a church pamphlet with the pastor's name crossed out. I looked up with a raised eyebrow, an obvious look of confusion on my face. What was this for?21

"A piece of the outside world I got not but a couple weeks ago. Behaving gets you a chance to get out." He responded as he gently took the pamphlet from me and began to fold it back up. Behaving? That meant allowing them to do what they wanted to me. For some reason the thought that the males were treated differently and better than the females crossed my mind. This was a rather disturbing and unsettling thought. When he came closer to me I reached out and grabbed a hold of the front of his shirt in earnest. I needed proof that he wasn’t being treated differently then me. I could never live it down in the least if it became obvious that males were reaping the benefits of the lab while us females were left to be drooling messes. I yanked his shirt up and found nineteen hand prints all over his chest, ribs and the tops of his arms. My gray eyes looked up at his emerald ones with an almost sympathetic look in them. 22

“What happened to you?” I asked as I allowed the fabric of his shirt to slip through my fingers. His eyes glazed over with tears as he pursed his lips, obviously trying to keep from me what had happened. Suddenly his eyes grew dull in an almost zombie like state as he pulled away and turned so he could no longer see me. Furrowing my brows I reached out and grabbed his wrist tightly and pulled him to the cage, throwing my arms around him. A gasp seemed to painfully escape his throat as he shakily wrapped his arms around me. I still don’t know what drove me to act outside of my nature but I did. 23

“Forty two thousand five hundred and sixty eight days of nothing but lonesome torture as each of us fell by each other’s hand.” He choked out as a heaved sob came from him. “Richard,” He stopped for a moment as his arms tightened around me, “Dr. Derelia I mean did this. He wants the best with the best.” His hand brushed against my back and I shuddered from the odd feeling. I pulled back and looked up at him with an irritated look. 24

“Please don’t think that because such horrible events have occurred for you that I will allow you to touch me like we’ve known and felt the same horrid troubles of the world. Best with the best means only one thing and I will not degrade myself into such a fantasy of love.” I huffed as I moved to sit against the back of the cage. With my eyes closed I hummed to myself a song I had heard playing through the head phones of the woman who came in with our food. The lines moved along the thoughts of for comfort, for sorrow, for the end of my broken heart. Later I discovered it was by a band called Killswitch Engage. Interesting choice in names for a band but none the less I enjoyed humming it to myself as I ignored Samuel.25

Suddenly the sound of metal grating against metal caught my attention. My eyes shot open with hope that possibly the door was being opened and I could come out and stretch my legs in front of all the others who were curled up inside their metal worlds. To my surprise it was Samuel opening the door with a key, the key I had only seem Dr. Derelia with. He never allowed any of his assistants to hold or possess the key. Here right now someone in a rather similar situation as my own held the key. I darted for the door without a second thought and felt the cool tile floor meet the balls of my feet. A cry of happiness erupted as I felt myself twirl around in the room. It had been so long since I had been able to stretch my legs so freely. I turned with a real smile on my face to Samuel, who had a smile as well. The last thought I had was, maybe he wouldn’t be so bad to have around. 26

This thought would continue with me for a few years. In fact he kept the men who frequented my cage for a peek at the perfect specimen from bothering me. He slapped away their hands which always wanted to find their way into my cage, where obviously I was cornered. Derelia never reprimanded him for fighting against the staff and if any of them raised an electric shock stick against Samuel, Derelia scolded them and threatened termination. I was still ever cautious even though these moments of peace should have brought me happiness. From a young age I had learned that pessimism usually paralleled with logic when it came to my life so I was wary of everything. Samuel though was more than optimistic that these few years of peace meant no more experiments on us both. I enjoyed his hope but I knew deep down this was going to be a build up to something far greater and far worse than either of us would be able to see coming.
~
There I was, just standing there, when what I wanted to do was forbidden. I wanted to make a change in the life style I had just become so accustomed to. I wanted my freedom more than anything so I began to act out even more than normal, fighting and biting, hoping maybe they'd toss me out. It was a hope I knew that was so bleak that the chance of ever tasting real freedom would not come. Samuel tried his best to calm the fury building in my veins as my sixteen year old body contorted and evolved with puberty and the genes that brought me this pain. I could feel my body churning, screaming to be released from this prison. I was nothing more than a demon sent forth from the deepest pits of hell. I wanted out now.27

Derelia was beginning to get on my nerves with his continuos prodding of Samuel and I joining together to create the spawn of the new human race. He was skating on thin ice-thats all I can say. To the point I couldn't help but try to take him out every chance I got. This promoted the chance for the other to use their electric shocks against me. At one point I had gotten so used to it but now, now with it happening every moment of my existence I began to grow shaky and unable to stand the surge through my body. The other experiments began to ignore me, they were all the same I decided, all out to only see me go down in a spiral of my burning fire. Because of this I decided I would never help them, if I ever got the chance.28

Today after being shocked into an oblivion I couldn't help but feel out and out depressed. Not like I hadn't experienced such a feeling before, but right now it overwhelmed and consumed me. I wanted to rip my hair out and fall into the madness that yanked at my every being. Samuel sat next to my cage, his eyes weary from having been up for awhile defending me against the other experiments who thought it would be funny to try and pick on me. His face had bruises and scratches from where items in the lab had come flying at him from certain telekinetics. I hated them all and felt like burning this entire building down. That was when I overheard the doctors speaking about moving me somewhere. Where was this new place going to be? I grasped the metal bars of the cage and peered out at who was speaking. My gray eyes followed their way to a young doctor, one who I hadn't seen before. He seemed a bit pompous in the way he stood and it made me want to growl. He continued to talk about how Derelia was being taken off of my case and that he, Dr. Howard would be taking care of me in private. 29

Private my ass. Is what I thought and still think. I was going to be nothing more than a pretty little toy for him to show off to the people who came in. None the less and to my protest and that of Samuel I was moved from the lab room that had been my home to another white walled room. Dr. Howard leaned down and opened the door to my cage but before I could make a move to get out I felt a needle prick my neck. The only thing I could think of that was possibly being put into my system was the only drug that had an effect on my system. A drug coined from my own DNA to subside the supernatural metabolism and slow my body’s functions. This meant no supernatural abilities at all, leaving me nothing more than a thin pale human. I cried out with a shrill tone as I tried to fight back against Dr. Howard. He grabbed me by the wrist and thrust my back into the desk in his office with a sharp shove. I cringed and fell to the floor in pain, my body not used to being dealt such high amounts of pain and being able to combat the affects. 30

“Let’s see how powerful you are now.” He cackled. I knew then this was not going to end soon in the least. I watched as three others, experiments like me, walked into the room. Their smirks caused chills to run up my spine as they advanced on me. I could do nothing more but back away from them, throwing punches in hopes that maybe my abilities would come rushing back. The adrenaline in my body fighting the drug and losing as one of them pinned me to the wall. I struggled with everything I had as he pulled at the rags that were the only things standing between my body and them. I scratched and bit as hard as I could before another took a hold of me and threw me to the floor. Dr. Howard stood not too far off with a camera in hand as he watched these teenagers take a hold of me and push me to the floor. The leader it seemed of the threesome held me down by the throat and finished ripping the rags from my body. I tried to curl into a ball but his minions grabbed the rest of my body and held it down. Oh how I wanted to be able to burn them all to hell at the moment. I wanted all of these people to feel the burning fire that consumed my soul. I was not human, I never was. They may be bi products of my genes but none of them would ever feel the liquid fire that flowed in my veins.31

He soon had my legs spread and took from me what he wanted as hard as he wanted. His voice huffing out insults about how the princess was nothing more than a whore now. I growled at first but soon my mind went blank and the world around me seemed to still as I drew deep within my mind. Spiraling down into the darkness of my existence I found myself searching for something. There was the cool feeling of dying within reach, mere inches from my fingers. I knew they were all taking their turns and using my body but I found myself completely focused on wrapping my fingers around the cool feeling of death. My mind though for some reason would not allow for such an easy way out of everything. Somehow, something inside of me knew that this would not be my end, that there was more for me to do. With a surge of power I felt my body bur n through the one drug that had held its grasp over me. The sweet feeling of my strength was returning.32

My gray eyes darted open and I met those of the boy above me huffing with over worked breaths. The gray was becoming silver as the power within my body began to build, surging, tearing through my body. With one simple thrust I threw his body into the opposite wall with such force that the sound of his bones breaking rang like a thunder storm in the room. I turned my attention to the other two as the energy around me began to heat up and spark with the anger and rage I had held in for so long. I reached out and threw a spark in the direction of the leader of this pathetic gang and watched as her burned. The smell of burning human flesh filled the room as I burned the last of the three experiments. I warned them all to not play with me. Next I turned to Dr. Howard. 33

“Time to pay your debt.” I snarled as I reached out and wrapped my hand around his throat. The choking noises that came from him only made me squeeze tighter as I reveled in his pitiful attempt to break free of my grip. “You see doctor, I am the princess and the perfect specimen because unlike the others,” I waved a hand over the melted corpses of the boys, “I am able to burn through all of the evil you have tried to infect me with. Your hopes of watching me break have come down to watching you cry in mercy.” A cruel smile crawled up to my lips as I let go of him and allowed for his body to slump to the floor. “I am not like you. I will not be called a monster because I am above your control.” He was shaking on the floor, sitting in a pool of his piss. At some point he must have wet himself in fear. He truly believed I would take his life then and there. Good at least he feared me and would leave me be. 34

“You will never get free of this place.” He said with a defiance that made me want to turn around and shut him up, maybe by melting his mouth closed. 35

Instead I snarled, “I will break free with everyone else and see to it that you and every other person who has had anything to do with this torture shall suffer the consequences of your missteps.” I turned away but that would not be the last I would see of him. It would be his and the other’s faults that the demonic creatures that were caused by those who survived but not enough to retain their human essence, would break free of this place and rain down on the human race. I would meet him one last time on a battle ground of apocalyptic proportions but that is later on. I set forth breaking free those who had continued to remain loyal to me during the times of distrust and tries to win favor. Samuel and I were now the leaders of a band of Immorti no older than sixteen.